17 ms·

Yeah, Germany has the best laws regarding speech: https://www.courthousenews.com/german-nationalist-wins-injunction-against-facebook/ https://www.courthousenews

• hnbad 5y ago
  Calling her a Nazi or fascist would have been fine as that's understood as an expression of opinion, calling her a swine is clearly an insult and insulting someone is a crime under civil law (not sure how this translates to the US but it's not something the police will arrest you for but something the insulted party can take you to court over). There's a common misconception in Germany that there is a law about "Beamtenbeleidigung" (insult of a public official) but the truth is that public officials have no special protection in that regard per se, it's just usually easier for them to sue people (esp. when you insult a police officer as they're literally the police). There are some caveats when insulting government officials, especially foreign government officials, but insulting a Nazi politician on Facebook is not any different from insulting a celebrity on Facebook. The problem with social media is that it can be difficult to find out who to sue and compelling a foreign company to release the likely incomplete information they have on a user in an attempt to identify them isn't great. I'm not saying the law in question (NetzDG, requiring social media companies to block such content in Germany) is a good solution to this problem but it's certainly not the worst. If anything, the problem with NetzDG is that it allows users who are able to avoid revealing their identity unambiguously to engage in Holocaust denialism or Volksverhetzung[0] and have their posts still be visible with a proxy if blocked (allowing Nazi groups to organize and operate hidden in plain sight) or when the content is deleted for those crimes to just be swept under the rug and make it harder to report to the actual authorities rather than the social media company. Social media companies like Twitter have also made it nearly impossible to report ToS violations in Germany as the report button immediately funnels you into NetzDG technicalities users aren't meant to understand like which specific law you believe the offending post violates. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
• germanier 5y ago
  On the other hand, there are numerous cases where Facebook has been compelled by German courts to restore posts they have deleted under their content policy to protect the user's free speech rights. Something like that is unthinkable in the US.
• noduerme 5y ago
  I say this as a Jew... I never thought it was a good idea to criminalize nazi or antisemitic speech in Germany. Ultimately any speech ban will be turned against the people who think they're doing good by enforcing it. Having said that, her speech is banned and her accuser's speech is banned, and this may be better overall than the situation in America where everyone is a fucking edgelord in their spare time.
  • vadfa 5y ago
    So impeding the speech of two people is a better outcome than impeding the speech of none? I don't get it. >the situation in America where everyone is a fucking edgelord in their spare time So don't read them, as easy as that.
    • hnbad 5y ago
      I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g
    • gherkinnn 5y ago
      > So don't read them, as easy as that. If only I knew the content of something before I read it. I would have to limit my internet use to Signal conversations with my dog to avoid most of tech’s poison machine.
      • vadfa 5y ago
        That is a good idea, it is what I did. I don't visit any social networks, I don't read the news, and I stop talking to those who send me information that I'm not interested in.
        • soco 5y ago
          Yet here you are commenting along everybody else on HN. Unfortunately real world situations are not that black and white so they cannot be solved with such black and white solutions...